Developing interest in reading with film

Summary

A specially designed motivational version of the filmKidnapped, using only a few interesting episodes, was more effective in motivating the withdrawal from school libraries of the book by the same title than a longer version which presented the whole story in condensed form. There was no reliable difference between the two film groups in the amount of reading done, but there was some indication that the motivational version stimulated boys to read more carefully, and a greater proportion of them therefore made higher scores on an objective test.

The results of this experiment suggest that producers of classroom films in this particular field need to consider the possibility of making fewer general purpose films and developing more films around very specific objectives of teaching. One of these which needs attention is the problem of motivation covered by this study.

In its program of excerpting feature films for school use, Teaching Film Custodians, the organization which developed the film materials used in this experiment, is moving in the direction of selecting shorter excerpts for meeting more specific teaching objectives.